


Cold Nights

by Elvarya85



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Cold, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Reminiscence, Snow, Winter, giftfic for jade, hurt!Clint, out on an op, shieldhusbands, worried!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvarya85/pseuds/Elvarya85
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint hated the cold. Because the cold made him clumsy. And when he got clumsy, he made mistakes. And mistakes get you killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Nights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thejademare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejademare/gifts).



> Written for someone on tumblr, who have me the prompt: Clint and Phil are on a mission. It’s mid-January and bitterly cold outside. Clint’s been up in his sniper post all night, and he’s freezing by now. He’s just finished his job, when he gets hit in the side with a bullet. Cue worried!Phil, Doctor!Bruce (because reasons, damnit) and worried!Natasha.

Clint hated being cold. He'd had enough missions where he was stuck in the snow.

Give him a nice mission in a tropical climate, he’d happily squat in a palm tree for a shot. Or a fucking desert, for all he cared. He’d take rattlers and scorpions and whatever the fuck else over snow any day.

Anything but biting wind and snow _please_.

Coulson’s voice crackled over the com. "Agent Barton, necessary communications only."

Clint realized that he'd been saying that all out loud. “Sorry, boss. Not my fault I can’t keep my teeth from chattering.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “I’ll make you a deal. Get the job done without a fuss, I’ll warm you up nice and special.” Phil grinned, despite himself. That’d give the guys back at base something to gossip about for months.

“Yes, sir!” Clint said, and Phil could almost hear the lopsided grin, the one he reserved for Phil and Phil alone, in the way he said it.

Then there was radio silence for hours. Clint was up in his perch, waiting for a clear line on the mark. He didn’t say anything the entire time, though the mic in the com occasionally picked up the sound of him singing a song under his breath.

It was something Clint had learned years ago, something automatic to keep him focused on the task at hand.

Phil didn’t know what song it was, but he’d heard it so many times at this point, it was comforting. Familiar. Something that was specific to Clint, and thus near and dear to him.

The sky was just thinking about getting lighter when Clint’s voice came over the com. “I’ve got a shot. Am I authorized to take it?”

When they first started working together, he would have asked about logistics. Chances of missing, how good is the shot, what’s the chance of getting a better shot, things like that.

But at this point, they’d been together for so long, first as handler and asset and then as so much more, Phil didn’t even need to ask. He could hear the certainty in Clint’s voice.

“Authorization granted. Take the shot and come on home.”

It was the same line Phil had used on almost every missing they’d ever run together, but it’d taken on a much larger meaning when Clint had relocated from his quarters on base to Phil’s apartment, just off base. It honestly wasn’t much of an upgrade, size-wise, but it smelled like Phil rather than the stale scent of air fresheners and febreeze that permeated every room at SHIELD, and Phil had to admit, he enjoyed watching as his formerly-empty and impersonal abode filled with small reminders of Clint’s presence. 

His ratty old boots sitting by the door. A Hawkeye bobblehead which Clint had bought at a gas station in the middle of an op. A picture of Clint with his arms wrapped around a beautiful woman. 

It’d taken a while for Phil to get an explanation on that one, and once he’d heard the full story, he insisted that it be moved to the mantle. They didn’t have a fireplace, but they could still put it in a place of honor.

There were even a surprising number of books. They started appearing a couple of weeks after Clint moved in, stacked beside the bed as he finished them until Phil went to IKEA and purchased some shelves for him.

Putting them together had been an interesting experience, to say the least.

Of course, it’d been more than a few years since then. They’d exchanged rings in the time since.

There weren’t many at SHIELD who knew. There were rumors about them being in a relationship, sure, but few people ever even got close to the full truth. Both preferred to offer as little information as possible, to plead the fifth, so to say. And hey, it gave the baby agents something to talk about.

As far as they knew, the Avengers were in the know, and so was Fury. Hill was questionable, but she never cared about those things anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Fury had tried to assign Clint a new handler when he realized the two of them were living together (he’d actually walked in on them rutting against each other in Phil’s office, oops) and Clint had had an outright hissy fit, first threatening to take out Fury’s other eye with one of his arrows, then straight up refusing to go on an op unless Phil was overseeing him.

Phil was still shocked Fury had bought into that one, but hey, he wasn’t going to complain about it.

He was pulled back to the present when he heard Clint say, “Arrow away.” Then he paused. “Confirmed, mark dispatched. Right in the eye.”

Eager to stretch his cramped muscles, Clint stood - bad decision - and was immediately spotted by sentries, which then reported back to a small army of armed security, and then he was propelling down the side of the building with his arrow anchored in a wall that didn’t exactly look that sturdy, so he was trying to scale down the side as quickly as he could before he, you know, fell to his death.

He heard voices behind him, shouting things in a language he didn’t understand, but the sentiment was conveyed perfectly when bullets started flying in his direction.

“Uh, Phil, I’ve got a bit of company...”

Phil’s reply was immediate. “What kind of company?”

Clint ran in zig zags, knowing it was much more difficult to hit him the more erratically he moved.

“The kind with guns and a thirst for my blood. Not sure on numbers.”

Phil’s entire body was tensed. This was exactly why he shouldn’t be Clint’s handler. He was too close, too involved. “Clint, get back to base. Now.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? Oh, shit!” Phil’s eyes widened at the exclamation, and then Clint’s breath was audible and labored over the com. “Phil, I’m hit. Torso, left side. Not sure how bad. Fuck!”

Phil’s entire body went cold, but he forced himself to keep talking, to keep his voice steady and calm. “Are you still on your feet? Can you make it back to base?”

“Still fighting, here, but I’m not sure,” Clint said, allowing fear to leak into his words. “I’m not far off, but shit Phil, I dunno.”

“I’m coming out,” Phil said. “I’ll carry you back if I have to.”

“No,” Clint said through teeth clenched in pain. “Fuck, I’ll get back. I can do it. Don’t sacrifice cover to save me.”

Phil sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Okay, you have two minutes to get back here, then I’m coming out for you. And I swear to God, Barton, if you die on me-”

“I’ll be there,” he promised. “Tell HQ to have Banner on standby.”

Phil rolled his eyes at Clint’s ridiculous refusal to cooperate with any doctor who wasn’t Banner but radioed it in, leaving the situation vague but letting them know that it was potentially serious and they needed him ready for anything.

Because Phil knew SHIELD didn’t want to lose one of their best operatives, and something like this, they’d immediately take over, micromanage the operation, and Clint would stop cooperating altogether.

So Phil was left there, stomach turning over in panic, staring at his watch as it counted down the time until he was going into rescue mode. 

With four seconds to spare, the tent zipped open and Clint stumbled in, looking gaunt and holding his side carefully. Beneath his hand, he could see the stuffing of his coat sticking out through a single hole, stained red. His coat was black so it didn’t really show much in the way of blood, but his hand was an ugly shade of scarlet.

As soon as he got into the tent, he collapsed, still semi-conscious, but unable to support himself any longer after trekking through the snow.

“Clint!” Phil exclaimed, hovering over him and quickly unzipping the coat. “Shit, Clint!” The wound didn’t see to be pouring _too_ much blood, which meant it had missed the major arteries, but it was still bleeding profusely, enough that it would be a definite problem if left too long. “Clint, can you hear me?” He placed a hand on the side of Clint’s face, trying to hold his attention.

“If I’d known you wanted to get my clothes off this bad, boss,” he mumbled, barely able to form intelligible words, “I’d have walked a bit faster.”

Phil smiled down at him, taking it as a sign that his archer wasn’t too seriously injured, though it was still pretty fucking bad to have a _bullet in your torso_.

He pulled out his walkie. “This is Agent Coulson. Barton is hit, repeat, Barton is hit. I have him in custody, requesting immediate pickup at designated extraction point.”

There was a long stretching silence, punctuated only by Clint’s loud, ragged breathing, and then a voice crackling over the radio, “This is Agent Romanoff, confirm, Agent Barton is hit, require immediate pickup?”

“Confirm.”

“The snow might delay us a bit. How immediate is the emergency?”

“We don’t have to panic yet, but any more than an hour, and we should definitely start breathing into some brown paper bags.”

“Noted.”

He looked down to Clint, who was gazing up at him with half-lidded eyes, looking like he’d started to doze. He pinched his neck to pull him back to awareness. “No, you can sleep when you’re in surgery, Barton.”

“But ‘m tired, boss.”

“And I’m tired of your bullshit.” He snapped a few times in front of his face. “Eyes on me, don’t you dare fall asleep.”

He groaned, but nodded, keeping his eyes trained on Phil, watching as the man searched through the first aid kit, pulling out a packet of powder and pouring it over the wound to cauterize it and stop any further blood loss.

“Is the pain bad?” Phil murmured, brushing some of the hair away from his face, wet down and stuck there by the thin sheen of sweat forming across Clint’s brow.

Clint tried to shrug, but just wound up wincing. “I’ve had worse.” Phil almost laughed. Almost. “There’s something that might help, though.”

“And what would that be?”

“If a certain badass agent would kiss his fucking husband. I mean, god, it’s not like I’m in life-threatening danger or anything.”

Phil actually laughed out loud at that and leaned down over him, careful to avoid the wound, and pressed his lips to Clint’s, hand stroking along the line of his cheekbone. “Okay, I kissed you, now you have to promise not to die.”

Clint gave him a lopsided grin. “Deal.”

Phil spent the next ten minutes caring for his husband, keeping him focused and conscious until more experienced and qualified medical personnel could get their hands on him.

Within two hours, he was sitting in medical, waiting for Clint to come out of surgery. He’d promised Natasha that he’d call her when he woke up, and he and Bruce had agreed not to tell Clint that he hadn’t actually been the one to perform the surgery, as Bruce had been out of the state at the time, giving a speech about his work with radiation, so he hadn’t exactly been available, but Clint didn’t need to know that.

It was another hour before Clint came out of surgery. It was successful, he was told. They’d removed the bullet and it had missed all vital organs, though it’d come awfully close to puncturing his left lung. Phil thanked the doctor profusely and was led to an exam room, where Clint was laid out looking bruise and unconscious but really fucking alive.

Phil stayed by his bedside for another two hours before the man finally came to. Clint awoke to find his husband asleep, hand clutching his own, head resting on the edge of the mattress.

Clint squeezed Phil’s hand, saying, “Hey, stranger.” His voice rasped and he tried to clear his throat and looked around for some water.

Phil awoke immediately, lifting his head to meet Clint’s gaze happily. He stood, bending at the waist to lean in to kiss his forehead. “Don’t you dare do that again,” he murmured, an obvious threat in his voice.

Clint smiled up at him. “I’ll try.”

Phil heard the rasp in his voice and crossed the room to pour water from the pitcher into a plastic cup, then handed it to Clint. “Here, Clint, you sound terrible.”

Clint took a long draw, then said, voice much clearer, “In my defense, I was just shot.”

“That’s no excuse,” he laughed.

“I can’t get out of anything in this marriage, can I?”

“I keep you honest,” Phil agreed, smiling fondly. “Here, scoot over.” Clint looked at him, slightly confused. “Oh, just do it.” 

Finally, he slid over so that he was taking up only one half of the twin-sized bed. Phil moved into the other half and wrapped his arms around Clint, kissing him on his temple, then on his lips, and humming a familiar song, wordlessly telling Clint to focus on him, that he was there, and that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated, here or on tumblr


End file.
